Fear Street: The Prom Queen

Five kind of best friends are all in the race to become Prom Queen at Shadyside High. Dawn is the star of the tennis queen and the super competitive girl who assumes that she’ll win. Simone is the drama queen, star of all productions and jealous of everything her boyfriend Justin does or any girl he talks to. Rachel is fairly poor, which is her basic stereotype and Elana is super rich. Lizzy is the girl who holds them all together and she’s holding onto hope that her recently moved boyfriend Kevin can come back for prom.

A few days after the nominations are announced, Simone goes missing. Conveniently, a serial killer praying on teenage girls is striking towns close to Shadyside. Lizzy stops by to see her, finds a big puddle of blood on the floor and sees a man in a maroon Shadyside baseball jacket running from the scene.

She’s convinced that the killer is Larry Brown, a dorky guy from her class who’s also on the baseball team. Larry dated Simone until she dumped him for Justin and he still seems fairly bitter. Rachel, Lizzy and Dawn go dress shopping and Lizzy gets pissed when Dawn takes the one dress she wants and buys it for prom. They go to the movies, but Dawn uses the bathroom and never comes back. They find her knocked unconscious in the bathroom.

Lizzy gets a call from Rachel, who’s crying on the phone and not making sense. Despite the fact that a serial killer is on the loose and it’s pouring rain, she runs over to her friend’s house. It turns out that Rachel’s boyfriend Gideon (is it 1885?) dumped her for Elana. Lizzy comforts her, even though she really shouldn’t. Rachel agreed to go on a date with Justin, while Simone was still alive and she was with Gideon, then freaks out because he dumps her. Turnabout is fair play lady.

Lizzy gets home and discovers that the killer was caught, but the next day Rachel turns up dead. Dawn suggests that someone is targeting the prom queen nominees (gee, do you think?), but Lizzy thinks it’s a stupid idea. Then Dawn, who took over the starring role from Simone, almost gets hit in the head with a sand bag while rehearsing. Lizzy, who’s working behind the scenes, shows up early one night and finds Elana dead on the stage. The cops say she was climbing up to the prop room, tripped and fell to her death.

All of this leads up to the night of the dress rehearsal. Justin confronts her, saying that he wants to take her to prom, but she can’t go with him because Kevin can go after all. Then she finds Dawn almost dead on the stage. A figure knocks her around and it turns out that it’s Simone! Simone rambles on about how she faked her death because her parents didn’t care about her and it gave her the chance to kill all the girls who fooled around with Justin and then kill him for not caring about her. Now she’ll kill Lizzy because she heard Justin ask her out.

Lizzy hits the button for the sand bag and it lands on Simone’s foot. She runs to check on Dawn and Simone grabs her and tries to choke her. Dawn stabs Simone with the same knife she stabbed Dawn with and Lizzy runs for help.

The book ends with the two girls dancing at prom, Lizzy in the dress Dawn bought. The school decided to donate the scholarship fund associated with the prom queen competition to a needy student and cancel the competition itself. The two girls laugh about the whole thing, Izzy thinks about how much she loves being in Kevin’s arms and I wonder how close Shadyside is to Sweet Valley High. Nearly killed? Don’t worry, we have a dance planned!